Brighton's palace already makes England look foreign
that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton
The Royal Pavilion is an unusually exact choice for this mistake: an English royal residence deliberately given an Asian appearance. John Nash transformed its exterior for the Prince Regent between 1815 and 1822, adding Indian-inspired domes and minarets; its interiors drew extensively on Chinese and other Asian decorative arts. It was a pleasure palace, not a temple. By Chesterton's time it was also a familiar public attraction: Brighton bought it in 1850 and opened it to visitors. Royal Collection Trust; Brighton & Hove Museums.
The building thus already contains the double experience the yachtsman is supposed to discover: the supposedly exotic is physically at home. Calling it a barbaric temple describes the armed visitor's mistaken classification, not the building's function. The flag-planting joke also turns the explorer's confidence against him: his apparent discovery is an act of failing to recognize his own country. That reading follows the scene's construction; it does not establish a particular expedition as its historical target.
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